Government payroll in RI keeps declining as share of residents
June 18th, 2012 at 12:25 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Justin Katz posted a chart on Friday making the case that Governor Chafee and lawmakers are starting to undo the reduction in the state’s authorized full-time employee count made during the later Carcieri years.
To offer a comparison, I fired up the St. Louis Fed’s FRED database to see how government employment has compared with the size of Rhode Island’s population since 1990. (This also includes federal employment, which has fallen slightly over that period.) Here’s what it shows:
It looks like government employment in Rhode Island as a share of population spiked in the go-go late ’90s, then began a bumpy decline that continued through 2011.
Fewer government employees doesn’t necessarily mean lower government employment costs, though – as Josh Barro noted on Bloomberg’s Ticker blog, unsustainable compensation structures can keep costs high for taxpayers even as the work force serving them shrinks.
• Related: RI state payroll down 23% since 1990; city, town jobs grow (July 1)
Tags: employment, jobs, justin katz, state government, state workers
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
Rhode Island may have less government employees, but the percentage vs the rest of the country is too high. It is time for outsourcing government jobs, consolidation of services. The Rhode Island taxpayers are tapped out. The public sector unions don’t have a clue of the value of money. These people have been overpaid for years, their pay has to be reduced to the CPI going back retroactively. Some public sector employees may need to work without getting a paying check or giving up their pensions.
Most of the salaries of state employees are to high for very little work.Let start with Ianazzi 90 grand for a dropout is a sad and pathetic joke.Another 90 grand for Sherry Damico and for what little she did.Family of Judge Higgins all on the state payroll.Family of John McBurney same deal.Corruption and nepotism is costing the state millions.Yet the retirees get hit with this burden.Slash the paycheck of every state employee.If they dont like it 60,000 unemployed Rhode Islanders would take their place in a second.
Where is the evidence that RI state employment is more than other states?
Government sector unemployment is at 4.2% nationally up from 3.9 percent.
This is considered ‘full employment’.
I doubt its that high in this state although they’d never release stats like that.
The all important Government sector must be kept fully employed with tax negative employees no matter the cost to the tax paying tax positive private sector.
Whatever Justin thinks, it wasn’t Chafee who did the ridiculous 38 Studios deal that Carcieri and Assembly Democratic leaders stuck us taxpayers and Chafee to mop up.